US Senate Derails ICE and Border Patrol Funding Over Trump Ballroom Project

A bid to restore funding to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and border patrol has been derailed by rows over a $1bn proposal for security measures tied to Donald Trump’s White House ballroom and controversial plans to create a $1.8bn “anti-weaponization” fund.

The US Senate will not pass the $70bn legislation ahead of a 1 June deadline set by the US president, Republican senators told reporters on Thursday, as lawmakers leave Washington for the Memorial Day recess.

It comes amid backlash from members of Trump’s own party against an attempt to latch funding for his ballroom project on to the immigration bill.

The plan prompted intense anxiety among congressional Republicans, who feared diverting taxpayer dollars toward Trump’s “East Wing modernization project” amid mounting cost of living concerns across the US would risk alienating voters ahead of November’s midterm elections.

Some Senate Republicans have also expressed concerns about a plan, announced on Monday, to create a secretive $1.776bn fund – which critics have argued is essentially a slush fund – to compensate Trump allies as part of an agreement in which the president and his sons dropped a $10bn long-shot lawsuit against the US Internal Revenue Service.

“I don’t actually see any legal precedent for that,” Republican senator Bill Cassidy, who lost his primary on Saturday after an extraordinary intervention by Trump to secure his ouster, told reporters earlier this week. “We are a nation of laws, you can’t just make up things whole-piece.”

Senate Democrats pledged to oppose the funding for Trump’s ballroom, and push “vote after vote” in an effort to force Republicans to publicly endorse it.

Republican John Thune, the US Senate majority leader, acknowledged “ongoing vote issues” with the wider bill earlier on Wednesday, as the party’s leaders try to gauge support.

Addressing reporters on Capitol Hill on Thursday, Chuck Schumer, the US Senate’s top Democrat, accused Republicans of trying to “sneak” ballroom funding into the bill. “The American people caught them red-handed, and now they’re trying to drop that hot potato,” he said.

Trump, meanwhile, continued to claim the ballroom funding proposal under consideration was for “national security”, including the drone port and bulletproof glass.

“If they want to spend money securing the White House, I think it would be very much a good expenditure,” the US president told reporters. Asked what if Congress doesn’t sign off on the funds, Trump replied: “Well, the White House won’t be a very secure place.”

The East Wing of the White House was reduced to rubble last year to make way for Trump’s plan for a gilded ballroom. Polling has indicated that most Americans oppose the controversial project, which remains embroiled in litigation in federal court.

“There will never be another building like this built, that I can tell you,” Trump told reporters on a tour of the construction site earlier this week. Touting a string of corporate donors providing funds, he insisted: “This is a gift to the United States of America.”

The Associated Press contributed reporting